The Cleavers are shifting to Rohnert Park
Ah, Rohnertpark. The friendly city. Can you tell the ethos of a city from a slogan? You bet it and you know that at Rohnert Park, the Beaver Cleaver vibe is paramount. You seem to have succeeded when local residents’ opinions are your barometer. Keep this in mind when I tell you it was a real struggle to find some juicy dark bits of history there. I mean that as a compliment. This is a city that did exactly what it should do: take a blank sheet of paper and turn it into a city that works.
The official story is boring: the land that is now Rohnert Park was the home of the Coast Miwok Indians. John Reed was the first English-speaking settler north of San Francisco. He built a house on high ground near Crane Creek, but was discouraged by the remaining Miwoks, pocketed his tail and returned to the San Rafael Mission to lick his wounds. He became the first of a series of absent landowners: General Vallejo founded Rancho Cotate, giving Juan Castaneda, one of his soldiers, land instead of cash, which he was chronically short of. Meanwhile, the mission system inexorably reduced the Miwok and evicted them from the land by various means; none of them good. Senor Castaneda eventually sold the land to Thomas Larkin, who sold it to Thomas Ruckel, who sold it to Dr. Thomas Page sold (not a word on whether it was a federal condition that the buyer be called Thomas, but it’s fine with me if it was). Dr. Page’s story was told well enough in my Cotati piece, so I’ll move on to modern times from here.
The land that was absent from this succession of absent fellows was referred to as the “low black meadow land”. Soil land is usually rich arable land, but this meadow has been exposed to flooding and was mainly used for grazing. That changed when Waldo Emerson Rohnert bought the land in 1929 and developed a successful irrigation system that consisted of a two-foot hill in the center of the field and two-foot ditches on the sides. Waldo Rohnert was another absent landlord, and when he died he passed the resulting seed farm on to his son Fred. Fred was absent too, but from his Hollister office he made the seed farm a success.
Fast forward to 1954 when Golis and Frederick’s law firm turned its attention to developing the area into a housing development for Sonoma County’s rapidly growing population after World War II. Telling you this part of the story in detail would glaze your eyes unless you were in the housing industry and it would take up the rest of this month’s Gazette. The basics: Golis and Frederick imagined eight neighborhoods, each built around a school and a park. They imaginatively enough named these neighborhoods A through G. The streets in these neighborhoods were named accordingly, A section with A names and so on. Over time (1966 to be precise) Sonoma State College was born.
I sincerely apologize if this little story piece glazed your eyes anyway, despite my best efforts. I admit it’s the furthest from spicy. Remember, “May you live in interesting times” is a Chinese curse. Rohnert Park has largely avoided this curse, and the many young families who raise their children and send them to their neighborhood school and watch them play in the neighborhood park is all very well and good. The Cleavers would be happy in Rohnert Park.
